Phimenes, de Saussure, 1855

Carpenter, James M. & Brown, Graham R., 2021, Catalogue of the Australian Eumeninae (Hymenoptera: Vespidae), Zootaxa 4919 (1), pp. 1-68 : 5

Phimenes and Delta

Giordani Soika (1972: 110) treated Phi de Saussure 1855 (Giordani Soika gave 1856 as the date), as the name for a genus consisting of some species he had previously placed in the genus Delta de Saussure 1855 (e. g. Giordani Soika 1961b). Cardale (1985) and Brown (2009) did not mention Phi . Carpenter (1986: 68) pointed out that Phi de Saussure 1855 , was a junior homonym of Phi de Saussure 1854 (now a subgenus of the polistine genus Mischocyttarus de Saussure 1853 ), and treated it as a synonym of Delta . This was overlooked by several later authors ( Giordani Soika 1987: 150; Giordani Soika & Kojima 1988: 181; Gusenleitner 1988: 184), who used the unavailable name. Giordani Soika (1992) proposed a replacement name, Phimenes . Carpenter (2008) did not accept Phimenes as a genus separate from Delta , but other authors have (e. g. Borsato 1994 [1993], 1994, 2003; Nugroho et al. 2012 [2011]; Kumar 2013; Nguyen et al. 2016). In the cladistic analysis by Hermes et al. (2014, see their fig. 83) Delta came out as more closely related to Katamenes Meade-Waldo 1910 than to Phimenes . Synonymy of Phimenes with Delta therefore requires consideration of the status of Katamenes , which we are not prepared to undertake at this time. Phimenes is accordingly retained as a genus.